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adsfew t1_jad5q2k wrote

I'm not an investigator and I don't have their facts or finding, so this is all just an extremely uninformed opinion.

I absolutely think a leak is plausible. But if 96% really is the similarity to the closest lab strain, then I just wanted to put in context how dissimilar that is genetically. I think it's one of those times where 96% sounds really high, but genetically it's pretty divergent imo.

It's still totally possible that it's a leaked strain and maybe the lab just destroyed the records of that strain or something. But taken on its own, 96% isn't that high in this context.

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adsfew t1_jacuefn wrote

96.2% actually seems massively different to me.

With a genome size of ~30 kb and proofreading ability, that's over 1000 SNPs acquired between a hypothetical leak and the sequencing of the wild-type virus. Omicron has > 30 amino acid mutations, so only ~100 SNPs—a whole order of magnitude lower than the link to a lab strain.

Obviously you can't directly compare a virus to a mammal and the generation times are wildly different, but humans and chimps share about 96% of the genome. 96% similarity means things were phylogenetically related at some point, but I'm skeptical that a direct leak would only be 96% similar.

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adsfew t1_j9ol13t wrote

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